[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Ten unfortunate assumptions of energy addicts

[Bill Totten]

by Jan Lundberg

Culture Change Letter #186 (May 24 2008)


This is a message on record crude and gasoline prices to oil addicts
(Hello!). I include their close cousins the green energy addicts
(Ciao!). This is prompted by the shallow, momentary news analyses of the
oil market, as well as by the slightly less-shallow boosterism of a
green-energy Utopia. Lend me your ears before I say, "Have a global
warming day" and we go our separate ways. I'd like to think I'm moving
to the country or the high seas.

I want to say "Hey" to the endangered American gas guzzler and all
manner of major oil burner, and, "Hail ye plastic-consuming, tax-funding
supporters of never-ending war! You've been driving up a storm, whether
Operation Desert Storm or the next Katrina." The few who aren't driving
are marginalized like Cassandras  -  usually considered losers. Our
hearts go out to one and all, for the (c)rude awakening has barely begun.

Some have pondered what it means for pump prices to get past $4 a gallon
and for oil prices to get to $135 a barrel. Continuing to ponder away
has, significantly, resulted in no action other than be forced to cut
back on some expenditures. Your habits and thinking haven't changed, but
they will shortly. This is a heads-up on what goes on with the oil
industry; it might help, for there is more than meets the eye that
affects everyone. What's in store for us all, energy-wise and for our
very survival?

"You know something is happening here,
but you don't know what it is
Do you Mr Jones" -- Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man, 1965

Our collective problem as we see the world sputter out of control for
the worse (before it gets better) is largely that so many loud mouths
claim to know what IS happening here. Honest and wise assessments of
what all is really going on are hard to come by, partly because the
corporate media suppress independent voices who may have the background
and objectivity to offer clarity.

There are several major assumptions blinding most of those who try,
within the confines of the dominant culture and "The System", to grasp
trends and glimpse the future:

1) Oil supplies will diminish gradually now that peak extraction has
arrived.

2) Alternative fuels and renewable energy can replace our petroleum
consumption.

3) The petroleum infrastructure can last or become renewable-energy based.

4) Technology is the equivalent of energy, and energy is energy (all the
same).

5) Today's population of consumers has something to fall back on if and
when petroleum-grown/distributed food and petroleum-pumped water disappear.

6) Government and scientists can see us through this challenge and save us.

7) "The market" and "entrepreneurial innovation" offer salvation for our
unraveling social fabric and our destruction of the ecosystem.

8) Climate change will be gradual and be reflected accurately by
numerical averages.

9) The US population can cope with anything and is at an advantage over
other countries especially as scarcity and adversity mount.

10) The "wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan are winnable or can be put behind
us with elections, and that the waste of lives and wealth on these wars
can be absorbed.


Baby, here are the debunking facts on the above, in order:

1. The oil industry and the oil market are, like the global corporate
economy, not set up for contraction. Enough of a shortage will sink the
whole ship.

2. Petroleum has no substitute, neither for all its uses nor for the
cheapness of the bygone days of rising supply. "Unlimited" petroleum
created the growth and abundance we've known. The main alternatives are
just for electricity and have far lower energy yield than the easily
extracted, cheap petroleum of yore.

3. The petroleum infrastructure is hard-wired and decaying rapidly. A
replacement-alternative needed to be created decades ago to avoid
industrial and economic collapse.

4. Energy comes at a physical cost (entropy) and has been exploited
according to convenience at hand. Continuing to wish for a free lunch to
power our endless consumption may yield gee-wizz technologies, but there
are too many weak links in the supply chain (metals, petroleum,
uranium). "Externalities" such as environmental degradation come home to
roost with, for example, the cancer epidemic.

5. People are basically eating petroleum as part of modern agriculture's
industrialization and scale dedicated only to profit. Ten units of
fossil energy are needed today to create one unit of food-calorie
energy, and that does not include transportation or food preparation.
The average piece of food in the US has to travel 1,500 miles from its
point of origin.

6. Government is not really in control of the gigantic, complex systems
it has unleashed for its Big Business constituency. Corruption,
incompetence and ignorance prevail, and reflect the dominant culture of
materialism and private wealth - at odds with any spirit of
citizen-cooperation for the public good. Katrina and Rita were only
ameliorated by individual and grassroots volunteerism.

7. Making more money and relying on ever-advancing technology is the
basis of not only green consumerism but the promise of a "new economy"
that is really just more of the same: a disconnect with ecology.

8. Global warming is already out of control, as positive feedback loops
have kicked in. The tipping points, accompanied by mass extinction
already underway, are inescapable and are characterized over geological
time by sudden, total flips to new states not seen on Earth perhaps for
the last 55 million years. It has always been true that Mother Nature
knows no restraint.

9. The average US citizen has become far softer than our tough forebears
who worked the land and could create and repair anything their lives
depended upon. Crucial skills have been lost along with community. Most
other countries have been called impoverished, but even after being
ravaged by corporate and government manipulation, they remain - compared
to Northern Americans  -  close to the land, and their peoples retain
family cohesion.

10. The cost of the Iraq War alone has approached half a trillion
dollars and is projected to cost over three trillion in the long run.
Far more significant is the death and destruction that, although tragic
and incalculable already, will persist for generations. The use of
depleted uranium amounts to a nuclear war that the average US citizen
knows nothing about, as if one is not affected on this side of the world.

One could add to the list and go far beyond ten. My May 22 2008 essay on
Ecocities (Culture Change Letter #185) contains explanation on the
workings of the oil industry and the oil market, helping to inform the
seeker.

We do not have an energy crisis or a financial crisis, but rather a
culture crisis. The above regrettable assumptions cover most of the
attitudinal confusion and error that prevent modern consumers from
understanding their own lives. Automatic acceptance of technology, and
chauvinism for the "Red White and Blue", with some religious faith
thrown in, are leading all of us  -  humanity and innocent species that
we drive extinct  -  to what may be oblivion. If this sounds too dire to
be possible, look at the direction we are going in, and do the math.

"Hope" is a human trait that we cannot live without, but it can be
dangerous to over-rely on. What are we hoping for? Continued affluence
for those who slave away, or compete or exploit, so that our homes can
be spacious and loaded with electronic convenience?

Why should the loss of our doodads and energy profligacy be considered
"doom and gloom"? This column has tried to dispel that false claim since
Culture Change's beginning in 2001, by exploring values enhanced by
fundamental change. Some of us have tasted the fruits of truly
sustainable living and equitable relationships. We will not restate here
the "solutions" or "the answer" that many demand upon realizing profound
change is in the offing.

People who are locked into their conventionalism and the collapsing
paradigm are afraid to question their own life-styles and their rulers,
such that a further-trashed natural world is preferable to taking action
that involves uncertainty. Their "System" is sacrosanct, but perhaps
society is on the verge of seeing widespread questioning of The System
and its demise at the hands of the many.

I used to provide the hungry news media with regular announcements and
analyses on US gasoline prices. Seeing the boring pointlessness and the
ethical toxic–hole of supplying solace and profitable information to the
motoring public and my major oil-company clients, I left. The "truth
business" I went into, that of researching and developing alternatives
to the dominant forms of transportation, land-use, has been lucrative
only in the spiritual sense, one might say. I trot out this background
to assure anyone that there is no refuge in playing the game of
materialistic "$uccess", because sooner or later one comes up empty.
And, the rewards of opening one's eyes and meeting people on equal terms
of real respect are vast.

I close with my explanation of what we are experiencing and what's about
to hit. I offer a warning and some hope.

We are caught in a culture of denial and ruination: of our rights as
humans and animals, and of the absolute interdependence of humans and
the rest of nature. Too many of us want to believe the propaganda that
brainwashed us as "THE Americans", regarding our being the most special
and justly proud of nations  -  never mind the inextricable bases of
slavery and the genocide of the native peoples. This is not to say there
are not amazingly wonderful Americans today. Nor do we forget we have
unique wonders of natural beauty such as the Grand Canyon.

But our phase of history whereby our "exuberance", as William Catton
called our "Overshoot", is coming to an end more swiftly than some us
thought even a few years ago. The world is turning upside down for
better AND for worse. The days of pumping gas and flicking a switch are
going to be all but forgotten when we lurch desperately toward more
human, "convivial" interaction (as Ivan Illich described our next
possible phase). That is, if we do not go extinct from our releasing the
chemical and radioactive genies into the world. Gone will be the days of
further such atrocities done without the permission of all affected.

If we pull through, we will live in such a way to reject false values,
idiocies and greedy tendencies that have dragged us all down. This
hegemony has at least accelerated its own demise and helped to close the
chapter on a bloody period that began many centuries ago. Now it is time
for us to open up the doors and go outside to our freedom. Don't wait
for the talking heads or bosses or politicians to give you permission.
Just tell them "Have a global warming day".

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